Curation and Creating Content are two very import activities here on Steemit. Until now I have been more focused on creating content but with some free time from work coming up, I will be able to do some serious curating.
For the content creator the primary focus is creating quality and original content (more about that in a moment), whether it is a blog, articles, stories, videos or stories, the content needs to grab the audience to make an impact.
It is also important for the content creator to gain a loyal group of followers and gain some visibility. Even if you have some interesting and high quality posts, it is easy to go unnoticed in the large quantity of posts that are being submitted. Getting on the Hot and Trending pages can be quite a task.
Interaction with the community is key, responding to comments and networking is very important. Investing time is an important and difficult factor, but doing this will pay itself back later.
Curation is in my opinion one of the hardest things to do. You have to find good quality posts and determine if they are going to do well. The thing is, that it is hard to predict if a post (even of high quality) is going to do well.
Curation also means discovering new, fresh talent. 
Curation is highly underestimated and a very important part of Steemit. I think that curation should be rewarded more than it is now. Curation will become even more important as Steemit keeps growing and the number of daily post will increase.
As I said, I am a very lousy curator, part of this comes from the fact that I don't have the time to both write posts and curate. I feel that if I am going to do something, that I have to take my time and give it my best. Simply upvoting the posts in the Hot or Trending section just won't do.
Because of that I notice that my curation rewards are not that high, especially compared to the payouts I get for my posts.
I might be that I am doing something wrong. I will have to read up on some curation manuals or guidelines to determine what the best approach is.
So what defines a quality post? This is very subjective but I think that there are some key elements that determine a quality post (of course we can always agree to disagree on this).
I have some free time coming up and I have leased some Steem Power from 
I had some Steem dollars doing absolutely nothing in my wallet and leased 55 worth of Steem (1375 SP) for the coming 4 weeks.
On Steem now on the top left side of the page there is a calculator (very small) that you can click open to calculate what your upvote will be worth at a certain amount of SP.
In this case for 55 SP, I more than doubled my voting power for the next 4 weeks.
It was hard to decide if I would lease 3575 SP for one week or 1375 for 4 weeks, but in sight of my upcoming 3 weeks of freedom, I decided to go for the long haul.
It will be interesting to see how the increased SP and dedicated curation will play out. I will post after the 4 weeks how it went and if leasing SP is worth it in my opinion.
Well not actually gaming, but there is a playful element to Steemit. Just posting will not get you where you want to go but there are means to aid you in your success. There are new initiatives to help minnows popping up daily and my advise is to try these out and see what suits you best.
Things I have tried so far:
@minnowbooster
@minnowsupport
@randowhale
@infobunny (although it seems that the train is standing still at the moment, possibly that @infobunny is enjoying some well deserved vacation time)
@make-a-whale and get some nice upvotes and curation in returnAs I said there are many more projects and initiatives for minnows available, go seek them out.
